Whoever has a WSJ subscription apparently this is a good article
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russian culture of highly centralized control goes back centuries. couple it with your observations and it’s easy to see the corollary. that if we examine true combat readiness of soviet army at the height of the cold war, ie their heyday, we would probably find it was overrated by western intelligence. nato wasn’t as strong, china hasn’t developed, technology hadn’t leapt forward, soviets could claim to be ahead in space. but it was all done with the leanest of resources down in the trenches, with low morale, neglected personnel, and corrupt leadership structures. this would have impeded soviet might, not put it onto same footing as the US.
So I took all my military history and studies courses (in college) in the mid 90s. We were still basing general doctrine on Vietnam and the Cold War, and battlefield strategy and tactics on Desert Storm. It’s absolutely bonkers to me that the stuff we learned then, which had become “obsolete” by the mid 2000s, is actually more relevant for this war.
But also, I think we need to re-examine it in a new light…and I think that the fact that Russia has nukes definitely colored our estimation of their overall military prowess. I have to wonder how doctrine would have developed in the 80s and 90s had the USSR not been nuclear-capable.
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Probably similar to Saddam’s army on steroids. I recall that we did not assume too much from them, and they did not deliver much.
At the beginning of the war there was a video from a Ukrainian drone that filmed cars fleeing down a freeway, spotting a tank and trying to turn around, and a guy gets out of the car with his hands up and the Russians just gun him and his wife down.
It was one of the first evidences that Russia was going to massacre civilians.
Well with the Russian front collapsing the Ukrainians were able to get to the scene. They found the couple. The Russians had attempted to burn them and the 11 other bodies along the highway.
The BBC has the report. It’s got some scenes of their charred bodies so a warning
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Why can’t we do that to Marjorie Taylor Green?
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Hey I wanted to take this moment to apologize to those I insulted a while back in this thread, particularly commonwealth. I am not gonna go all “that’s not me” because ldo it is just scroll up, but dude didn’t deserve all of that so I wanted to make it publicly known that I am sorry for being an idiot.
I am also going to scroll up and figure out who else I insulted without cause an apologize to them as well but I figured I should start here.
Afterward I plan to stay the hell out of this thread because it’s way too emotional a topic in which to involve myself.
I love (most of) you all 
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It seemed out of character for you. You never really know what’s going on with people. I hope everything’s ok.
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Interesting development.
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I read a thread on Twitter by a Pentagon analyst that claimed that Russian doctrine isn‘t the problem but they aren‘t even following their own doctrine. He contrasted it with France in 1940 who rigidly followed their bad doctrine that was based on flawed assumptions how a German attack would look like.
Edit: found it
https://twitter.com/c_m_dougherty/status/1509910414330638344?s=21
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I’m not really sure what “mad” means in this context. Is “mad” (in the first case) code for “crazy enough to actually use a nuke”? Is this a case of “well if we are sorta kinda pretty sure he isn’t insane enough to escalate to WMDs we can safely roll a bunch of NATO armor into Ukraine”?
What is it with these assholes and George Soros?
Mr. Putin brusquely dismissed the notion as nonsense. He said he had read all of his intelligence services’ reports and knew the movement had been orchestrated by the U.S., the EU and George Soros, Mr. Rybachuck recalled in an interview.
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He’s Jewish and a big donor for the other side.
Antisemitism is a hell of a drug
It’s great that Putin just turns out to be another delusional Facebook/Fox News Boomer. I legit had no idea about this until the last couple of months.
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